OK, so the final word count looks pretty pathetic. I think I actually may have written a word or two more, but I didn't have the heart to update my totals (on either the main NaNoWriMo page [1], or in Second Life [2] write-in boards). But I'm still excited, because this is one of those moments where the usual spin about turning failures into triumphs is less hollow! So where did it all go wrong? where did it go OK? Here is the skinny:
- Founder's Permission to Fail: I actually talked about my novel idea with Chris Baty [3] at the South Bay pre-kickoff event. He liked it, but then his comment was "Sounds like it might be too serious for NaNoWriMo [4]". Well guess what? it sort of was! This is my favorite excuse this year, except that I have come to realize that success is possible if your outline is up to snuff. I had a developed outline, but it began to grow (see Fractal Overload below).
- I started off with a bang. I had fun at the kick-off party, the write-in at Psycho Donuts [5], the write-in at Caffe Trieste [6] as well as a couple of virtual locations in Second Life. I never made it to the write-in at my local Cafe, as it interfered with my favorite naptime.
- Fractal Depth Overload: Did you ever try to run a fractal generator on an early PC, and remember how zooming into computationally heavy areas could crash it? The same principle applies to characters, plot, settings, etc. Every time a composite character with some real basis wanted to as much as scratch him/herself, I had to look at all of the newspaper clippings for that historical day, listen to what music would have been on the radio, and go through all of my boxes of archives and scan the relevant materials. In short, I stopped writing, and started doing archaeology. But it was really a lot of fun, and my terabyte-sized outline should really allow me to actually write soon.
- I had to do some writing that I actually get paid for: Not to say that my novel won't make a million overnight as the Beatles' song promises, but I had to put any potential pie-in-the-sky advance aside in order to get an actual check that I could deposit in time to pay bills and stuff. All starving writers know that this is a good problem to have and that I might actually be bragging instead of complaining.
- I got sick: Really - a nasty bronchial thing that looks like it will have been with me for a month before it is gone. I was well enough to sit up and actually write numbing technical stuff (see the bullet above), but I lost any sense of reality or emotional connection to the characters and events I was writing about. So I spent more time napping and zoning out, even when I had writing time.
- I had some good family time during the holiday: Yay! people I hadn't seen in a while too. I consider trading that for novel writing time to be a success.
Ok, now that my failure is excused by that lovely list, what (if anything) did I learn that I can do/undo for next year?
- Have the outline as complete as you need, so that you can just write write write, and not get bogged down in archaeology or other distractions.
- Stay away from sick people for all of November, and the last week of October. This may make going to write-ins a bit of a challenge.
- Try to schedule all other projects for other months. If I fail as gloriously next year, it will likely be because this is not possible.
- Plan to fail gloriously if your novel really needs it, or a rare chance to spend time with people you care about comes up. These are two reasons why I keep participating in NaNoWriMo, and also two reasons for which I will happily fail every time.